Cultivating creativity: predictive brains and the enlightened room problem

Author:

Constant Axel1ORCID,Friston Karl John2ORCID,Clark Andy134

Affiliation:

1. Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK

2. Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, WC1N 3AR, UK

3. Department of Philosophy, and Dept of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK

4. Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia

Abstract

How can one conciliate the claim that humans are uncertainty minimizing systems that seek to navigate predictable and familiar environments with the claim that humans can be creative? We call this the Enlightened Room Problem (ERP). The solution, we suggest, lies not (or not only) in the error-minimizing brain but in the environment itself. Creativity emerges from various degrees of interplay between predictive brains and changing environments: ones that repeatedly move the goalposts for our own error-minimizing machinery. By (co)constructing these challenging worlds, we effectively alter and expand the space within which our own prediction engines operate, and that function as ‘exploration bubbles’ that enable information seeking, uncertainty minimizing minds to penetrate deeper and deeper into artistic, scientific and engineering space. In what follows, we offer a proof of principle for this kind of environmentally led cognitive expansion. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’.

Funder

H2020 European Research Council

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Reference70 articles.

Cited by 4 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Human innovation and the creative agency of the world in the age of generative AI;Possibility Studies & Society;2024-03

2. Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar: a predictive semiotic theory of mind and language;Semiotica;2024-01-26

3. Aesthetics and predictive processing: grounds and prospects of a fruitful encounter;Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences;2023-12-18

4. Order and change in art: towards an active inference account of aesthetic experience;Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences;2023-12-18

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